Teach Boldly

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

EXAMPLE

The year is close to its end. We can see May coming and with it, summer. There can be a tendency to let the cares and challenges of the year wear us down as we round this final turn to the year’s end. It is all too easy when the finish line is in sight to allow ourselves exhausted slips in our behavior.

We are tired and we are ready to be done.

It has been a challenging year.

However, as educational leaders, this is the time of year when we most have to challenge ourselves to provide an example of energy and realistic positivity to our colleagues. If we let down, we give license to everyone to do the same. We have weeks to go. We have to model the attitude we would like people to have.

Providing an example to those we serve is an important part of this work and a tool that we should not forget to use. The attitude we take as leaders and the example we set makes a difference. If we lose sight of that fact, we lose sight of one of the responsibilities of leadership.

Leaders’ examples make a difference in the culture of the school.

Dan Brown created a phenomenon with The DaVinci Code which was, bracketing potential heresy (as it is a work of fiction), a very ripping yarn. In that novel, he gave readers an enduring character in Professor Robert Langdon, essayed in a number of films by Tom Hanks and on television by Ashley Zukerman. 

Langdon is a complex creation, certainly the most fully developed character in the Brown novels. What I have always loved about him is his effortless smarts.

I dig smart people doing smart things and Langdon is among the smartest.

Though I never pictured Tom Hanks when reading the books, it is difficult not to now and, in a way, Hanks has what I like about the character: an easy, everyday smartness that is engaging and unassuming. 

Give me more and more smart people doing smart things, please.

We never know the influence we have… While culture tends to promulgate the “those who can, do, those who cannot, teach” idiocy, there are hundreds of examples of brilliance and impactful teachers in reality and in pop culture. Every-other-week this year, I will share my brief reflections on Smart People Doing Smart Things be they in literature, in film, in music or in real life. Many will be teachers, but not all. Many will be fictional, but some will be real. All will be inspiring. Welcome to IntelliPop!

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

PROVIDE RELIEF

Throughout my career in educational leadership, it has been a helpful exercise for me to vocalize why I got into this field in the first place. I graduated from high school in 1988 and I knew I wanted to be an English teacher. Specifically, I wanted to be an English teacher who directed high school plays. In the almost 30 years I have been in this field, I have never directed a play… but I have taught English in almost every single one of them.

The reasons are simple: I like teenagers. I like English. I like to teach.

The rewards are too many to name. 

One of those rewards, however, has become an unintended cornerstone in my leadership. Because I teach, I have to know how to do things, how to take attendance and handle discipline and write my syllabus and use the learning management system. These are not small things but they are critical in the life of a teacher. They would be so easy to not consider from the principal’s office.

But I do because I teach.

This means that I can step in for a teacher whenever and wherever I am needed. This means that I do not need hand-holding in any manner when I am in a classroom. I know this sounds silly, but it is not. Knowing what to do and how to do it is important when stepping in for a teacher.

Providing relief for teachers is incredibly important. They work very hard on teaching their students and, then, they have to complete duties and grades and sub for each other and teach advisement classes and the list goes on. 

Whenever, wherever an administrator can step in for a teacher, an angel gets its wings.

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

CALM

“In the eye of the hurricane, there is quiet” sings Alexander Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Quiet, peacefulness, calm – whatever term we would like to use here, this is a tool leaders must possess to foster stability and trust in those they lead.

Working in education often feels like working in a hurricane. I remember a day in my first year as principal/president of my school when we had an electrical fire in the main breaker box, a toilet explode spraying water as high as the bathroom ceiling and a roof leak that was pouring water through a ceiling fan in an administrative office. I remember a day when I was working from home and was on a Zoom call when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a truck that I knew was supposed to be in park in front of my house rolling down the street. I remember a day last year when we experienced 3 significant positive cases of COVID in the school within 1 hour of each other and had to initiate quarantines back-to-back-to-back. I remember lightning striking right as an outdoor graduation began.

I am sure I do not need to go on.

I do know that, if the leader is not calm in these (and in all kinds of other stressful situations), she gives those being led permission to lose their s#!+. The leader who does not remain peaceful in the face of stress and quiet in the eye of the hurricane loses a modicum of respect from those being led. 

Calm is a powerful tool.

Professor X founded the X-Men back in 1963. At that time, he opened a school for gifted students who had amazing powers and who were outcasts needing a place of shelter. There were 5 students initially and they were all devoted to the professor and to his mission.

Since then, the X-Men have become wildly popular and hundreds of students have come and gone, hundreds of superheroes have graduated his school and hundred of issues of The X-Men and spin off titles and movies have seen the light of day.

And Professor X has changed.

I like the early Professor Charles Xavier, a kindly, powerful man whose motives were pure and whose methods were above reproach. While I understand the need to modernize comic book stories which are published month after month and to alter the characters so they have complexity and growth, when I think of the Professor, I reach back to a simpler time.

And I am okay with that.

We never know the influence we have… While culture tends to promulgate the “those who can, do, those who cannot, teach” idiocy, there are hundreds of examples of brilliance and impactful teachers in reality and in pop culture. Every-other-week this year, I will share my brief reflections on Smart People Doing Smart Things be they in literature, in film, in music or in real life. Many will be teachers, but not all. Many will be fictional, but some will be real. All will be inspiring. Welcome to IntelliPop!

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

PRIORITIZE 

I have written in a prior blog about a school leader who commented to someone that an individual’s email was “a snowflake in my blizzard.” 

I do not love the statement.

I do not love that statement, especially when delivered to a person who sent the email hoping for help, but I hear the sentiment behind it.

Leaders in schools are often inundated with questions and concerns and decisions and conversations all of which cry to be attended to, many of which cry to be attended to with some alacrity. 

There are times it is relatively easy to know what to do first. When a car is on fire in the parking lot (something that really happened during Parent/Teacher Conferences at a school where I worked), a leader knows that situation has to be addressed. immediately.

A leader I very much respect referred to that kind of prioritization as “The Tyranny of the Immediate.” No big thinking involved. Just get it done.

However, the non-immediate but no less critical issues also call for a leader’s attention. Good leaders have methods by which they prioritize. They have a system they follow to be sure things that need to happen, happen. They have a structure by which they order what comes next.

Good leaders can prioritize and the must to be effective.